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Just like Cyprus, Ireland is strongly suspected to have huge oil and gas reserves off the Irish coast. In fact many test wells confirmed such was the case but have been capped for a later date. A quick look at Providence Resources web pages confirm that discoveries as far back as 1981 have been capped for a later date:

The discovery well (35/8-2) was drilled by a consortium led by Phillips Petroleum (and included Atlantic Resources, the predecessor company to Providence) in 1981 and flowed c. 1,000 BOPD and c. 5 MMSCFGD from one of four logged payzones of Upper Jurassic age. Post-drill analysis by Phillips suggested that while the discovery could contain resources of up to 1.1 TSCFG and 112 MMBO, it was deemed uneconomic due to a combination of low commodity prices, high production costs and lack of gas infrastructure in Ireland at the time. Providence commissioned a series of independent reports which suggested that the field contains estimated contingent resources (2C) of 1.4 TSCFG and 160 MMBO with significant upside potential both within the field and in adjacent prospects.

Now Exxon is looking to exploit further its Dunquin field as reported in the Irish Independent.

Oil giant ExxonMobil kicks off a $160m-plus (€125m) drilling programme off the west coast of Ireland this weekend with hopes that confirmation of major fossil fuel reserves will transform the country’s economy.

The US company is planning to drill test wells over a four-month period at two prospects at the Dunquin licence area in the Porcupine Basin, 200km off shore.

Previous data has suggested that there could be over 300 million barrels of oil and 8.5 trillion cubic feet of gas between the two Dunquin prospects.

If they could be proven and then extracted, such finds would mark one of the biggest ever global discoveries of oil and gas and be a game-changer for Ireland’s economic fortunes.

Interestingly TPTB and the lamestream media like to spin it that its a long shot, as follows :

But despite the 200 or so wells drilled off Ireland’s shores in the past number of decades, only two have resulted in commercial fields – Kinsale and Corrib.

Located at a point in the Atlantic where the ocean is 1.6km deep, ExxonMobil’s drilling programme is being eagerly watched by oil companies from abroad and Ireland, including Petrel Resources, which has an exploration block just 35km away from the Dunquin prospect.

Spanish energy firm Repsol owns 25pc and UK-based Sosina has a 4pc interest. Irish exploration firm Providence Resources has a 16pc interest in the prospect. A major oil or gas find could catapult its shares higher.

The Dunquin prospect – where the reserves are as deep as 3.6km under the seabed – is one of the most important exploration areas for Providence, which is headed by Tony O’Reilly Jnr.

Providence is also betting that it could have a major oil find on its hands at a site called Barryroe, which is close to the Kinsale field. The company reckons that there could be 280 million barrels of recoverable oil at the Barryroe prospect.

ExxonMobil has spent $20m to bring the exploration rig from west Africa to Ireland’s waters. The rig is owned by Norwegian group Ocean Rig. ExxonMobil will spend over $1m a day on the drilling activities, which are expected to last between 90 and 120 days.

The Department of Transport has already issued a warning to shipping in the area. It says that the semi-submersible rig, called the Eirik Raude, will be supported by supply vessels operating out of the port of Cork.

A 500-metre exclusion zone will be enforced around the rig for the duration of the drilling.

“All vessels, particularly those engaged in fishing, are requested to give the Eirik Raude a wide berth and keep a sharp lookout in the relevant area,” said the department.

The port of Cork is also hoping that it could become an epicentre for Ireland’s oil-and-gas industry if offshore reserves are proven.

Ultimately to understand how corrupt Irish politicians have given the countries reserves away, basically for free, the following link explains all.

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It has long been held that one of the biggest reasons for the invasion of Iraq was to carve up the oil by the oil industry. A new book titled Fuel on the Fire by Greg Muttitt exposes the link between the big oil companies and the invasion through a series of leaked memos.

Plans to exploit Iraq’s oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world’s largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

Graphic: Iraq’s burgeoning oil industry

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain’s involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair’s cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as “highly inaccurate”. BP denied that it had any “strategic interest” in Iraq, while Tony Blair described “the oil conspiracy theory” as “the most absurd”.

But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq’s enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair’s military commitment to US plans for regime change.

The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP’s behalf because the oil giant feared it was being “locked out” of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: “Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis.”

The minister then promised to “report back to the companies before Christmas” on her lobbying efforts.

The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq “post regime change”. Its minutes state: “Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity.”

After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office’s Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: “Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future… We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq.”

Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had “no strategic interest” in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was “more important than anything we’ve seen for a long time”.

BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf’s existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world’s leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take “big risks” to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.

Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002.

The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq’s reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila field in southern Iraq.

Last week, Iraq raised its oil output to the highest level for almost decade, 2.7 million barrels a day – seen as especially important at the moment given the regional volatility and loss of Libyan output. Many opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington’s main ambitions in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil.

Mr Muttitt, whose book Fuel on the Fire is published next week, said: “Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had no interest in Iraq’s oil. These documents provide the evidence that give the lie to those claims.

“We see that oil was in fact one of the Government’s most important strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to give them access to that huge prize.”

Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya’s National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters. Last night, BP and Shell declined to comment.

* Foreign Office memorandum, 13 November 2002, following meeting with BP: “Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity to compete. The long-term potential is enormous…”

* Tony Blair, 6 February 2003: “Let me just deal with the oil thing because… the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern, I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It’s not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons…”

Looks like the Cypriot model of using depositors money to bailout insolvent banks is being adopted by Canada. New Zealand has similar plans and if you listen to the Dutch Finance Minister, eurozone countries willsimilarly being robbing your money when banks are finally allowed to announance they are bust.

SD has been alerted to an alarming provision that has been buried deep inside the official 2013 Canadian Budget that will result in depositor haircut bail-ins jumping to this side of the pond during the next bank crisis!
Titled ECONOMIC ACTION PLAN 2013 and tabled in the House of Commons by Minster of Finance James Flaherty on March 21st, the official 2013 Canadian budget contains an explicit provision that Canada will pursue the bail-in model for systemically important banks for future bank failures!

Depositor haircuts have just jumped to this side of the pond, effective the next bank crisis/ failure:
From Page 144:

“The Government also recognizes the need to manage the risks associated with systemically important banks—those banks whose distress or failure
could cause a disruption to the financial system and, in turn, negative impacts on the economy. This requires strong prudential oversight and a robust set of
options for resolving these institutions without the use of taxpayer funds, in the unlikely event that one becomes non-viable.”

Translated, Without the use of taxpayer funds means via depositor funds.

And the meat of the provision, from Page 145:

The Government proposes to implement a bail-in regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital.
This will reduce risks for taxpayers. The Government will consult stakeholders on how best to implement a bail-in regime in Canada.
Implementation timelines will allow for a smooth transition for affected institutions, investors and other market participants…

Confiscating wealth from depositors will reduce risks for taxpayers??? Only those with 100% of their assets in physical gold and silver, or those Canadian depositors who are somehow not also taxpayers perhaps!
The bail-in provision in Canada’s 2013 budget can be found on pages 144,145:http://www.budget.gc.ca/2013/doc/plan/budget2013-eng.pdf

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It looks like the Cypriot banks are going to be in a lot worse shape when they open than first thought. Cypriot capital controls don’t apply to branches in foreign countries and this is being used by people to withdraw deposits from the struggling banks. This will necessitate a much bigger haircut when the dust settles.

Then this morning the 20%-40% seizure of the depositor’s money, which was the range that had been discussed, was now admitted by the Finance Minister in Cyprus today to be more like an 80% expropriation and a timeline to get any money back of six to eight years. This is, I suspect, because while the banks were closed in Cyprus that they were still open in Greece and Britain so that certain monies crept out during the night, and probably big money, so that the banks in Cyprus are in far worse condition than previously thought or admitted.Then, of course, because the EU Finance Ministers were not going to meet again and re-open this fiasco; more money had to be seized from the depositors. Now the Dutch Finance Minister chaired the meeting on Cyprus. He was the one that directed the entire affair on Cyprus and the template that he revealed was fist denied then admitted, then denied by the ECB and confusion reigned supreme. Now here comes the first pig; the representatives of the Eurozone finance ministries released a document this morning stating that Cyprus was not the template for future bail-outs. I suppose it was initially written in German and translated into English however they must have forgotten to translate it into Dutch. This is because when the Dutch Finance Minister was asked about this document, and he is the Chairman of the Finance Minister group remember; he said he knew nothing about the document.

…………

the banks of Cyprus just re-opened in Greece this morning. I don’t know, the flights from Moscow to Athens must be jammed. There are no capital controls in Greece so you can take out what money you like while the banks in Cyprus are still closed and now subject to capital controls. “Sense” and her brethren “logical,” “rational” and “coherent” must have all departed from Europe in a huff. No one could make this up; no one.